Politics

Wednesday marks the final day of the Dutch F-16 fighter jet missions targeting IS. The Netherlands announced the decision on Monday, saying the six F-16s and two spare units need to be "available for various rapidly deployable units and NATO."

In a short New Year's address, Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema praised the hopeful feeling around the city's future. She said the city wants more people to be able to access Amsterdam's growing prosperity through policy that addresses poverty, disenfranchisement, and crime.

Dozens of new laws, rules, and regulations went into effect in the Netherlands at the stroke of midnight on Tuesday. Among them, a cut to the 30-percent ruling, new income tax credits, mortgage caps, a sales tax increase, expanded childcare subsides, and more rights for cities to seize homes related to the illegal drugs trade.

The Dutch government is implementing a number of law changes on January 1st. Below find a summary of changes made in the category Family.

The government set aside 248 million euros to increase childcare allowance next year. More information about what percentage of your child's childcare costs you can have compensated, can be found here.

A Dutch-flagged ship that rescued 32 migrants from a sinking boat near Libya is still looking for a harbor where the migrants may enter and be processed as possible refugees. The Dutch Justice and Security ministry is trying to help find a port for Sea-Watch 3, part of the German organization Sea-Watch.

But Sea-Watch claims that the Netherlands was one of the countries refusing to allow the ship to enter.

Drivers in the Netherlands were neither imagining things nor embellishing in 2018 when they complained about travel times. Dutch highways were far more clogged in 2018 than a year earlier, with traffic jams up nearly 20 percent.

The heavy traffic had an impact on rush hour, but also outside of the daily busy periods, travellers association ANWB revealed on Thursday. The organization made their calculations based on both the frequency and duration of traffic jams.

A Yellow Vests protest in Belgium briefly blocked that country's traffic from crossing the border into the Dutch city of Maastricht on Wednesday night. The blockade on the E25 highway in Voeren, Belgium, was just a few hundred meters away from the border point.

Dutch authorities assisted their Belgian counterparts in controlling the protest.

About 20 Yellow Vest demonstrators were involved. They allegedly set a fire using pallets and rubber tires, according to L1.

Amsterdam Public Prosecutor Nicole Zandee is firmly against the call from some politicians to relax the approach to ecstasy. "Personally, I am not in favor of that", she said in an interview with AT5. "I think it's junk."

Zandee pointed out that ecstasy is still on the first list of the Opium Act and considered a hard drug. "There are also still young people who die through the use of ecstasy."

Mayor Marc Witteman of the municipality of Stichtse Vecht in the province of Utrecht passed away on Monday night from the effects of lung cancer. He was 57, the municipality said on Facebook.

Witteman announced in April last year that he was diagnosed with cancer. He continued working as mayor for almost 18 months until his health forced him to step down on August 1st. Yvonne van Mastrigt took over as acting mayor.

In his sixth Christmas Day address to the Netherlands, Dutch King Willem-Alexander spoke in support of equal opportunities and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, even quoting former U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Willem-Alexander used his annual platform to speak out against intimidation, extremism, and marginialization of people deemed "different".

A mistake was made in a survey intended to gauge what the Dutch population thinks about daylight savings time. In one question about implementing permanent summer time the survey states that the sun will set at around 8:00 p.m. at the end of June, while in fact the sun will set at around 10:00 p.m., NOS reports.

The Dutch population is rapidly losing interest in going to church, according to social and cultural planning office SCP. The decline of the Christian faith also continues in the Netherlands. "Churches are losing in authority, binding power and popularity", the SCP said in a new report, RTL Nieuws reports.

The vast majority of Dutch are for scrapping daylight savings time, according to a survey among over 1,800 Dutch ordered by Minister Kasja Ollongren of Home Affairs and Kingdom relations. 41 percent want to keep winter time all year, approximately a quarter want summer time to be the standard time, and another quarter want to stick to the current system of adjusting the clock twice a year, NOS reports.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte kicked off the VVD's campaign for the Provincial States elections with an open letter published in multiple newspapers. In the letter, addressed to "all the ordinary normal people", Rutte calls on the Dutch to protect the Netherlands. Remarkably, the VVD is not mentioned once, AD reports.

GroenLinks wants ecstasy to be removed from criminal hands by having the government regulate the drug's production, parliamentarian Kathalijne Buitenweg said to the Volkskrant.

"The government does not have to make the pills itself, but the government must want to take control", she said to the newspaper. She recommends a permit system with controlled production, so that only pills that meet quality requirements are available. "I say it because of public health, but also because we have to do something about the frighteningly growing power of criminals."

Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb does not want to go through with an alcohol ban set to be implemented in Wijkpark Oude Westen next year. It is better to offer help instead of fining homeless people caught violating the alcohol ban, he said in the city council meeting, RTV Rijnmond reports.